In The End They Found Us.

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Who's Afraid of the Debut Novel?

Dennis Haritou: Answer: The Publishers Are! Where have all the debut novels gone please? And why, when I scan pub catalogs, is every third or fourth book a memoir? Our friend James Frey, who supported us by twice promising to give us an interview, has thus far failed to do so. But I suspect the reason for this procrastination is he too busy writing another memoir. (Actually, I wish he would write another memoir but that's another story.)

The memoir has largely supplanted the first novel in publishers' affections as a drop dead money maker. Despite Oprah's outrage over perceived misstatements in Mr. Frey's book, the truth is that the general public loves the memoir. The casual reader wants a "true story" so they can snoop on the author who goes through hell but then reassures them by surviving to tell the tale. It's like: the memoir is a train wreck that I want to watch. Tell the same story as fiction and the public cools. Many first novels are autobiographical anyway. Maybe copy for debuts should include the phrase "based on a true story" to spur sales.

Why do I love first novels? Because writing one is like trying to rebirth our take on life. And the next best thing to writing a first novel is to be able to read one. A restoring vision, and for the technically inclined, a re-imagining of the art of writing...trying to find a fresh approach to storytelling. For all the creative ingenuity of a good memoir, the novel, especially a debut, is like alchemy, a transformation of what could be. Our realism would rot away unless it was repeatedly invented: like God is said in medieval theology to be creating the world, not all at once in a big bang, but continually.

...For although in a certain sense and for light-minded persons non-existent things can be more easily and irresponsibly represented in words than existing things, for the serious and conscientious historian it is just the reverse. Nothing is harder, yet nothing more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.

from MAGISTER LUDI

So Jasons, what kind of debut fiction would you like to see? Can you define the perfect debut novel?

Jason Rice: The reason people liked James Frey's memoir, and I mean a lot of people liked it, mostly because they want to be entertained, and remain comfortable in their place in life where they knew there was someone out there worse off than them, they wanted to be entertained, close the book and walk back into their safe lives. In recent years the novel, debut or otherwise has nearly vanished or at least been pushed to the margins. The three guys know this to be true because we see every single catalog from every single publisher three times a year. Dennis you're right, it's all memoirs or event non-fiction, or reportage non-fiction about the wobbly society we live in or how fucking insanely banal this world has become, or to put it politely, mediocre. Publishers have even admitted that fiction sales have dipped because the small faction of people who do read literary novels know where to find them, and know exactly what they like. Publishers know this, but bonuses have to go to someone, pay checks delivered, and a novel by a newcomer ain't gonna do that, no often enough anyway. People traditionally look to books for advice on stock market strategies, or climate predictions, or fast food tidbits, or even a tell-all from a Washington insider about a sitting President, no matter how poorly written. Again, reading about something that doesn't involve them, those who read.

That aside, novels find their way into my hands 20-30 times a year, because that's all I read. I know it's narrow minded, but I know what I like, and life is short. I told Dennis and Jason about this a long time ago, even other co-workers of ours who recognize my narrow focus, and don't seem to mind. The perfect novel...debut or otherwise? I think I've read four; Incandescence by Craig Nova, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk and Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz. Now I can safely say the reason I love these books is because they're written by men I admire and see a little of myself in the portraits they've chiseled out. I was floored by the detailed family dynamic in Franzen's book, his separately described but completely luminescent sibling rivalry culminating with the sister and her talents as a chef. The book dipped dangerously into obsessive tones with metallurgical exposition, culinary fascinations and Eastern European flavor that kept me interested and riveted. Nova wrote Incandescence when he was a young man, his hero, or my hero as it were, came in shades of brown and grey, simple but smart, and head over heels in love with a Greek woman who couldn't shake her father. He'd invented a way to beat the race track and ran an apartment rental scam that was so right on it was maniacal. Fight Club hit me at the right time of my life. 1996 I was just starting out at Random House and through this book I realized what it really meant to be a late twenty something and know that the company you work for is just not in it for the same reasons you are. Plus the writing was so fresh and new, vibrant and filled with beautiful one liners that I could barely contain my glee as I read it. Toltz and his masterful story of the Dean brothers reminded me of Guy Ritchie and his funny heist movies, weird predilections and wild anger driven by the desire to stay alive. It took me by surprise, I never saw it coming, and don't think I've ever read anything like it, or will again.

Good novels, ones I like to read, I know within five sentences. Bad books, and there are many, I know in two. It's just something that's come my way through years of reading just fiction. I should say that there are two women novelists who've written what I can call perfect books. Zadie Smith with On Beauty, a novel filled with such brilliance, wit and intelligence that I'm ashamed to say I ever tried to write a novel. It's subtle and filled with people who are too fucking smart for their own good, highly educated upper class-men who don't have any friends. It handles race, sex and art with equal measures of grace and subtly. Even the art is delivered as a sharpened spear, only to maim, never to entertain. Then of course AM Homes who is really the only other female writer tough enough to hold my attention. She writes about the suburbs like she was a student of both Richard Yates and John Cheever while she probably was brought up to be a nice young lady. I watch her beating down her characters, really giving them a hard time, shaving their heads, pushing them to burn their own houses down, get drunk, and generally make Rick Moody look like a push over with his rickety take on the American suburban life.

I guess it's equal parts good writing, people I don't like, with a little bit of battery acid smeared in the open wound. Perfect novels don't exist until you've read them. Good books don't jump off the shelf, you have to find them. Perfect debuts? I named a few, but so few have come my way lately that I wonder who is even writing them. I compare the perfect novel to Paul Thomas Anderson's perfect movie, Magnolia. The reason that movie worked on so many levels is mostly due to the fact that I didn't identify with the regular joes he had written, I just believed they were real. I forgot about everything else.

Jason Chambers: Honestly, as a buyer I pay attention to debut novels, simply because I know that the vast majority of them will not sell very well, with the exception of the rare book that gets the right review attention and marketing (Edgar Sawtelle, anyone?); so any purchase must be well-considered. As a reader, however, I don't concern myself much with it. That is, until I read it for awhile and say to myself "who the hell is this guy?" I start a lot of books, and I put a lot of them down in 80-100 pages or so, feeling like I know what I need to know about the book already, and not really caring much about the rest of it. As JR notes, some books simply make you say "holy crap!" and plow onward. I agree that Fraction of the Whole was one of those books. And it seems like you have found a real gem when that book is a first novel, because you wonder whether the author is a one-trick pony or whether you have a lot of great books to look forward to. Finding an author whose work you look forward to is great; as we get older, so much of the childish pleasure of anticipation escapes us. What do I look for? An interesting premise, and a good first couple of pages. What else do you have to go on? Marketing plans? Covers? Blurbs? Christ, everyone has a good blurb now. Every third book is pimped by Palahniuk, Pat Conroy, Michael Connolly or Jesus himself. I can assure you they aren't all that good. Good first novels of the recent past : Bright Shiny Morning - Like we said at the time, flawed but relentless interesting; Fraction of the Whole - probably the best book I've read this year; Special Topics in Calamity Physics - amusing hyper-intellectual drama (similar to the Toltz in this regard); Mudbound - interesting Tobacco Road wannabe; Little Book - time-shifting historical fiction; or, if we include genre fare, Chicago Way - the first in a promising line of crime novels.Of course, for every good one you find, you read - or start to read - tons of others, and reject even more without even serious consideration. Read more!

"Hell Was Full So I Came Back."

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An Interview with the Mummy of Naguib Mahfouz

Dennis Haritou: The Three Guys like to interview the writers we discuss whenever possible. In this case, however, I had been participating in the NEA big international read by reading Naguib Mahfouz's The Thief and the Dogs which I enjoyed very much. So it was very fortunate that I have been able to secure an interview with the mummy of Naguib Mahfouz through extraordinary means. Mahfouz has, of course, passed beyond our horizon. And whether you believe in an afterlife or not, it is certainly the case that he is in a better place. After examining the notes that I took at this interview, I was struck by how consistent Mahfouz's views were with those that he expressed in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. We all know of people, especially writers and intellectuals, whose opinions are expedient and as changeable as the weather. Yet here is a artist who has suffered translation to the other world and still maintains consistent views. I was filled with admiration. The interview is below. It is followed by a brief concluding comment. The interview took place in a tomb whose location must remain secret. The time was dusk which is when reception is best between our world and any other. I had promised to come alone so, unfortunately, there were no witnesses and I might add, no one to bolster my confidence, because I was throughly spooked out. But anything for the Three Guys blog.

Dennis: Mr. Mahfouz, thank you very much for taking our questions. Thanks to the kindness of one of my favorite stores in New York, 192 Books, I was once squeezed into a reading given by one of my literary heroes, Orhan Pamuk. I will never forget that before reading an excerpt from his then new book, Snow, in English, he read some passages in Turkish. He knew that most of his audience would not be able to follow him, but he said that he wanted to give the English-speaking crowd some feeling for his novel in the Turkish language. Your great and greatly varied works, for which you won the Nobel, are written in your native language. Do do have any thoughts about the importance of that?

Mummy: I would like you to accept my talk with tolerance. For it comes in a language unknown to many of you. But it is the real winner of the prize. It is, therefore, meant that its melodies should float for the first time into your oasis of culture and civilization. I have great hopes that this will not be the last time either, and that literary writers of my nation will have the pleasure to sit with full merit amongst your international writers who have spread the fragrance of joy and wisdom in this grief-ridden world of ours.

Dennis: Mr Mahfouz, I have been reading your work for many years, starting with that very great family saga that I found impossible to resist, The Cairo Trilogy. But I recognize that many who are participating in the NEA Great Read may be unfamiliar with your name. For their benefit, could you tell us something about yourself and your background?

Mummy: Permit me, then, to present myself in as objective a manner as is humanly possible. I am the son of two civilizations that at a certain age in history have formed a happy marriage. The first of these, seven thousand years old, is the Pharaonic civilization; the second, one thousand four hundred years old, is the Islamic one. I am perhaps in no need to introduce to any of you either of the two, you being the elite, the learned ones.

Dennis: Mr. Mahfouz, can you tell us something about your attitude toward that ancient civilization that lies at the foundation of your country? That ancient world is never far away in your fiction, even when it treats of contemporary themes, and I'm not sure that all of your readers realize this.

Mummy: As for Pharaonic civilization I will not talk of the conquests and the building of empires. This has become a worn out pride the mention of which modern conscience, thank God, feels uneasy about. Nor will I talk about how it was guided for the first time to the existence of God and its ushering in the dawn of human conscience. This is a long history and there is not one of you who is not acquainted with the prophet-king Akhenaton. I will not even speak of this civilization's achievements in art and literature, and its renowned miracles: the Pyramids and the Sphinx and Karnak. For he who has not had the chance to see these monuments has read about them and pondered over their forms.
Let me, then, introduce Pharaonic civilization with what seems like a story since my personal circumstances have ordained that I become a storyteller. Hear, then, this recorded historical incident: Old papyri relate that Pharaoh had learned of the existence of a sinful relation between some women of the harem and men of his court. It was expected that he should finish them off in accordance with the spirit of his time. But he, instead, called to his presence the choice men of law and asked them to investigate what he has come to learn. He told them that he wanted the Truth so that he could pass his sentence with Justice.
This conduct, in my opinion, is greater than founding an empire or building the Pyramids. It is more telling of the superiority of that civilization than any riches or splendour. Gone now is that civilization - a mere story of the past. One day the great Pyramid will disappear too. But Truth and Justice will remain for as long as Mankind has a ruminative mind and a living conscience.

Dennis: Mr. Mahfouz, I have to admit that sometimes I fear that the pressures I feel to come up with material for the Three Guys blog will drive me insane. And maybe I have already been pushed over the edge. For I don't see how I can be talking to your mummified form. Pardon me for my bluntness but being a mummy can't be in accord with your religious position, can it? So perhaps I am not talking to Mahfouz, the great writer, at all but to some Deceiver. Or perhaps, through some crazed conceit, I am talking to no one at all but am addressing only the dark air of an empty tomb. But reassure me by talking about Islamic civilization whose art I love so much.

Mummy: As for Islamic civilization I will not talk about its call for the establishment of a union between all Mankind under the guardianship of the Creator, based on freedom, equality and forgiveness. Nor will I talk about the greatness of its prophet. For among your thinkers there are those who regard him the greatest man in history. I will not talk of its conquests which have planted thousands of minarets calling for worship, devoutness and good throughout great expanses of land from the environs of India and China to the boundaries of France. Nor will I talk of the fraternity between religions and races that has been achieved in its embrace in a spirit of tolerance unknown to Mankind neither before nor since.
I will, instead, introduce that civilization in a moving dramatic situation summarizing one of its most conspicuous traits: In one victorious battle against Byzantium it has given back its prisoners of war in return for a number of books of the ancient Greek heritage in philosophy, medicine and mathematics. This is a testimony of value for the human spirit in its demand for knowledge, even though the demander was a believer in God and the demanded a fruit of a pagan civilization.

Dennis: How on earth do you balance these two great traditions?

Mummy: It was my fate, ladies and gentlemen, to be born in the lap of these two civilizations, and to absorb their milk, to feed on their literature and art. Then I drank the nectar of your rich and fascinating culture.

Dennis: Mr. Mahfouz, you come from a very troubled corner of the world. How does that relate to your work?

Mummy: You may be wondering: This man coming from the third world, how did he find the peace of mind to write stories? You are perfectly right. I come from a world labouring under the burden of debts whose paying back exposes it to starvation or very close to it. Some of its people perish in Asia from floods, others do so in Africa from famine. In South Africa millions have been undone with rejection and with deprivation of all human rights in the age of human rights, as though they were not counted among humans. In the West Bank and Gaza there are people who are lost in spite of the fact that they are living on their own land; land of their fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers. They have risen to demand the first right secured by primitive Man; namely, that they should have their proper place recognized by others as their own. They were paid back for their brave and noble move - men, women, youths and children alike - by the breaking of bones, killing with bullets, destroying of houses and torture in prisons and camps. Surrounding them are 150 million Arabs following what is happening in anger and grief. This threatens the area with a disaster if it is not saved by the wisdom of those desirous of a just and comprehensive peace.
Yes, how did the man coming from the Third World find the peace of mind to write stories? Fortunately, art is generous and sympathetic. In the same way that it dwells with the happy ones it does not desert the wretched. It offers both alike the convenient means for expressing what swells up in their bosom.
In this decisive moment in the history of civilization it is inconceivable and unacceptable that the moans of Mankind should die out in the void. There is no doubt that Mankind has at last come of age, and our era carries the expectations of entente between the Super Powers. The human mind now assumes the task of eliminating all causes of destruction and annihilation. And just as scientists exert themselves to cleanse the environment of industrial pollution, intellectuals ought to exert themselves to cleanse humanity of moral pollution. It is both our right and duty to demand of the big leaders in the countries of civilization as well as their economists to affect a real leap that would place them into the focus of the age.

Dennis: I don't see how it's possible to make progress when every nation seems to be out for itself. What do you think?

Mummy: In the olden times every leader worked for the good of his own nation alone. The others were considered adversaries, or subjects of exploitation. There was no regard to any value but that of superiority and personal glory. For the sake of this, many morals, ideals and values were wasted; many unethical means were justified; many uncounted souls were made to perish. Lies, deceit, treachery, cruelty reigned as the signs of sagacity and the proof of greatness. Today, this view needs to be changed from its very source. Today, the greatness of a civilized leader ought to be measured by the universality of his vision and his sense of responsibility towards all humankind. The developed world and the Third World are but one family. Each human being bears responsibility towards it by the degree of what he has obtained of knowledge, wisdom, and civilization. I would not be exceeding the limits of my duty if I told thom in the name of the Third World: Be not spectators to our miseries. You have to play therein a noble role befitting your status. From your position of superiority you are responsible for any misdirection of animal, or plant, to say nothing of Man, in any of the four corners of the world. We have had enough of words. Now is the time for action. It is time to end the age of brigands and usurers. We are in the age of leaders responsible for the whole globe. Save the enslaved in the African south! Save the famished in Africa! Save the Palestinians from the bullets and the torture! Nay, save the Israelis from profaning their great spiritual heritage! Save the ones in debt from the rigid laws of economy! Draw their attention to the fact that their responsibility to Mankind should precede their commitment to the laws of a science that Time has perhaps overtaken.
I beg your pardon, ladies and gentlemen, I feel I may have somewhat troubled your calm. But what do you expect from one coming from the Third World? Is not every vessel coloured by what it contains? Besides, where can the moans of Mankind find a place to resound if not in your oasis of civilization planted by its great founder for the service of science, literature and sublime human values? And as he did one day by consecrating his riches to the service of good, in the hope of obtaining forgiveness, we, children of the Third World, demand of the able ones, the civilized ones, to follow his example, to imbibe his conduct, to meditate upon his vision.

Dennis: Dear sir, I implied in my opening remarks that you must be in a better place since any place or even a void might seem preferable to the suffering that is experienced in our so-called reality. Are you hopeful or do you despair?

Mummy: In spite of all what goes on around us I am committed to optimism until the end. I do not say with Kant that Good will be victorious in the other world. Good is achieving victory every day. It may even be that Evil is weaker than we imagine. In front of us is an indelible proof: were it not for the fact that victory is always on the side of Good, hordes of wandering humans would not have been able in the face of beasts and insects, natural disasters, fear and egotism, to grow and multiply. They would not have been able to form nations, to excel in creativeness and invention, to conquer outer space, and to declare Human Rights. The truth of the matter is that Evil is a loud and boisterous debaucherer, and that Man remembers what hurts more than what pleases. Our great poet Abul-'Alaa' Al-Ma'ari was right when he said:
"A grief at the hour of death
Is more than a hundred-fold
Joy at the hour of birth."
I finally reiterate my thanks and ask your forgiveness.

Dennis: One last question, a customary one in interviews like this. Can you tell us anything about what you are working on now? A new novel perhaps?

                                                              .......................................

But to this question I received no reply, at least no reply that I could understand. For I thought I detected a faint whispering, or maybe it was a kind of hushed rustling in the vicinity of the mummy. So I approached and placed my ear very close to where I believed the mummy's head to be. Have you ever had one of those dreams where a character, perhaps someone very important to you, says something vital only you can't make out what it was? That's just the way I felt. 

Nothing, apparently. The interview was over. Since shaking hands seemed impractical in this case, I respectfully leaned over and placed a kiss on the mummy's cheek. Have you ever kissed a cadaver before? I certainly have. But that's not so very extraordinary for someone my age. As the years go on, first you start out kissing dead bodies and then you end up becoming one yourself. 

In my case it was my mother. This is quite a salutary experience since somehow the death doesn't register properly on your pysche otherwise. You think that the loved one is still around somewhere. Perhaps they just went to the store and will come back shortly. But when your sensitive, live lips make contact with a beloved face that has become just a mummified object, believe me, it sinks in what the word gone means. 

It was, by now, quite dark, and I have to say I was wondering how I was going to find my way back to the nearest Long Island Railroad station from this remote location. So I left swiftly, not even turning around for a last look at the mummy of Naguib Mahfouz.

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The First Stop

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A True Story by Darin Strauss

We’re always trying to bring short fiction to the blog and whenever we have talked about certain writers and their books we always ask for a short story. This is the second short story we’ve had that concerns baseball. We hope you enjoy it, and thank you Darin for sending it our way.


A True Story
By Darin Strauss
My grandmother’s father played for the Brooklyn Kings before the team found the name by which you know them: the Dodgers. He was their first baseman. That was the legend I grew up on, anyway. It was the crack of the 20th century. Manny Joseph, the only Jewish King, got razzed during away games. Catchers would mutter “kike” and worse when my great-grandfather stood to bat; fans yelled all the old insults.

Another Brooklyn Yeshiva Boy, Sandy Koufax, arguably the best lefty ever to pitch (or, inarguably if you’re a Jew of a certain age, a certain intensity of allegiance), won with the Dodgers half a century later. A pious Jew with ears like handles on a loving-cup trophy—old-world ears; Franz Kafka ears—Sandy Koufax skipped out on a desperate World Series opener to worship in synagogue; the game had fallen on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. This act of steep piety made him a hero—better yet, a mensch—in Hebrew School circles.
My great-grandfather held different priorities. On another Yom Kippur—at the start of my great-grandfather’s career and the 20th century—the Brooklyn Kings’ Jewish first-baseman sneaked from temple to sit for a team photo. I cherish a copy of that picture. Dapper in his straw hat and intricate necktie, Manny Joseph is the only player not wearing cleats, a Kings cap, or the old-fashioned leather mitt that looked like a cartoon-swollen hand—the habiliments of Brooklyn baseball, circa 1900.

And if he’s not exactly handsome among his scruffier teammates, his black-and-white face is lighted by one of those rakish half-smiles so beneficial to a good boy’s looks when he’s acting naughty, or thinks he is. Holidays he never cared for, his wife he didn’t like, but baseball was my great-grandfather’s delight.
Or so the story goes.

Bald, tired Manny Joseph would talk reluctantly about his sport years, his life before the emphysema, before my grandmother was born. He’d lean his hands on a table, his peanut head a little dropped. “It was great thing,” he’d say. “But it’s over now, so.”
To find out more about his playing days, I schlepped last year to the library at Cooperstown’s Baseball Hall of Fame. And this is where the story, like all family stories, gets complicated.
“No Manny Joseph here,” said the librarian, her eyes creeping like snails over a book of names listing anyone who ever played professional baseball in America.
“And,” this woman said, with a voice practiced at killing the already slain, “the Brooklyn Dodgers used to be the Superbas, not the Kings.” I went home dejected. I decided not to tell my Dad .
And yet, in writing this piece, I figured I’d give it one more shot. I found, a website called “Major League Baseball Franchise Information.” It reads that the Brooklyn Dodgers were called the Superbas until1910, but also that one of their “nicknames”—whatever that means—was the Brooklyn Kings, in the 1880s. I don’t think Manny Joseph would have been old enough to play then, but I don’t know. Also, I do have that photograph: a professional-looking team with “Kings” inscribed on their chests, and the one young Jew among them, wearing a smile and his Yom Kippur best.

One thing I do know: he loved talking baseball. The last day of his last season, a Sabbath night, my great grandfather Manny Joseph played his best game. He went five-for-five and squibbed out the game winner, a wounded pop-up that dodged the shortstop’s glove.
“Thanks God he didn’t catch it,” my great-grandfather said, for years afterward.

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Goes Without Saying

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The Great Man by Kate Christensen

Jason Rice: The Great Man by Kate Christensen has just arrived in trade paperback from Anchor Books and along with it a landslide of praise, and its the winner of the Pen Faulkner Award. I know we're a little behind the curve on this particular title but I thought it was an important book for us to talk about here on the blog. I've been an admirer of this authors work for some time, and was especially repulsed by her novel Jeremy Thrane, repulsed in a good way, sickened but I couldn't look away. It's always interesting to see how writers take on the art world, artists and the creative process. I've seen so many efforts on the subject; Patrick McGrath with the ill fated Port Mungo, and Jami Attenberg's masterful Kept Man, both reveal a man and his craft, but fall back on a stereotype that is up to this point been beaten to death.

The Great Man focuses on a great painter's inspiration, namely the women in his life. I thought this was a very interesting track to take especially since a story about a painter is nothing new. There isn't a stone unturned in this story, and it's subtlety and shades of emotional nuance wisely crafted by an author who makes it look and sound like she's been an active participant in the art world for years. Right away we're thrown into the discussion of what makes a great painting, where the artist gets his creative inspiration and what exactly that inspiration does all day while the famous artists works. Teddy St. Cloud dominates the first third of this story and where this woman came from, who she is, and how Ms. Christensen created her is a fantastic mystery. The great artist in question is none other than Oscar Feldman, who has just passed away. Teddy is just the first in a string of women to orbit Oscar's world, the painter as a man, remains a thumbnail sketch and while we meet other women in his life you have a confirmed feeling that you may never know more about Oscar unless it's refracted through the prism of the women in his life. It turns out Oscar has two wives, two sets of children, and a deep history that basically shows the women in his life to be nothing more than enablers to his irresponsible and selfish behavior, plus a sister who is in direct competition with Oscar in the art world. What's most important about these women is that we get to see them in wonderful detail and all told through a frank and uncompromising point of view.

Dennis Haritou: Along the lines that JR suggests, pin down the relationships between three women in Kate Christensen's The Great Man and you have gathered up this lapidary story as if it were a glittering wrap that you had forgot about but are delighted to discover you have. Teddy St Cloud the mistress, Maxine the sister and Abigail the wife of now legendary Great Man, Oscar Feldman: the most influential figurative painter of his time, now deceased, and the great gaping hole (intended) in the middle of this story. At first, I had no little anxiety about whether I could keep these three women straight. I also worried a bit as to whether Christensen herself could keep them straight and let them all talk with their own voices.

What helps is their associations: Teddy can be identified with the culinary excellence that she loves and with her best friend, Lila. Maxine is a famous abstract expressionist and you can associate her with her dog Frago and her loyal assistant, Katerina. When I think of Abigail, I remember her tragically impaired son, Ethan and her woman-betrayed status as Oscar's wife. Further relationships, among them to daughters and to loves both won and lost, extend outward from these three women like tendrils of an elegant but greatly weathered vine. There are also at least two key male characters (not many guys in this story) rival biographers of the great Oscar, whose inquiries into Oscar's art and predatory womanizing jump-start the story. All this by way of agreeing with JR about the outstanding detail. Great architecture. Great Man also reminded me very much of the George Cukor film classic, The Women, where a philandering husband, who never appears, serves as a focal point for turning an angle of vision on a group of interesting women.

Culinary excellence in this story, Teddy's special talent, serves as a paradigm for civility. There is the most incredible gourmet meal served at a gallery reception that Maxine attends which replicates symbolically the history of evolution. It must be read to be believed and it's hysterically funny. I must also affirm JR's conviction that Christensen relaxed familiarity with the art world is a great asset in this story. Abigail also has an amusing foodie scene with one of Oscar's biographers where what is chosen from a menu and who chooses it, seems to loom large with significance for at least a few moments. But the magical food recipes are an analogue, for me, for the the deep friendships, improved by age, and other close relationships whose display are the real point of this book and so very contrary to Oscar's predatory exploitation of women.

Jason Chambers: Of course, it's frequently been the case for novelists to use the creative process as a proxy for their own experience, and the practice is as common as it ever was. Note, too, the ever-growing set of "story behind the painting" type of novels which are largely, but not completely derivations of the hugely popular Girl with a Pearl Earring. Then, as well, there are the artist portraits, like the one's JR mentions above, and tons of others.

I thought of an actual biography while reading The Great Man, however -- Norman Mailer's interesting but flawed Picasso. I thought it was an interesting comparison because, first, Mailer's biographical work tends to say as much about himself as about his subjects, a subject which came to mind frequently in The Great Man. We have these two equally ambitious would-be biographers with different world views and different relationships to the women they interview about Oscar, and one wonders about the nature of biography and how accurate it can be with the multitudes of interests and motivations by different characters.

Next, Oscar is himself a Mailerean character -- a larger than life braggadocio, roaring through the world brimming with drink and testosterone, leaving the art world and countless women reeling in his wake. But rather than following Oscar on his rampage through the art world, Christensen follows the wake - the ripples that turn the lives of these three women. So in contrast to the bare masculinity of Mailer, Christensen focuses on the women. As noted above, the relationships and stories unfurl expansively from these three characters as they interact with each other and the biographers, revealing unknown history and telling tales that they meant to keep private, but needed to tell to someone. The result is a rich story, filled with prescient details both amusing and sad, about the art world, academia, aging, and plenty of other subjects. A worthy read, I thought.

JR: I'm glad we all like this book. JC, I like your Mailer comparison, it's true, more towards Mailer himself than anything or anyone he wrote about. Jackson Pollock is also someone who left women and the art world in shambles, and somehow he finds his way into this book, which makes me wonder how much influence he had on the author when she was trying to weave this story together. DH you make some great points about Teddy and her culinary tastes, which until you mentioned it really went over my head, being an anti-foodie myself, I looked back with great awe at the times Teddy spent preparing food for whomever came her way. Maxine was a great foil for all the women involved, daughters, wives, lovers, even canine love interests, and certainly could have used more time in the story. Seeing as this book is already in paperback and has been received by the world with open arms I hope it's not to late to interview the author. I've put in a request with her editor. Lets hope she can take a few minutes and answer our questions. Thanks again guys for a great discussion. Read more!